Whatever Shape Your Burdens Take
by AP Stacey
Summary: Annika Shepherd has frustrated the malevolent force, known only as the Reapers, twice - leading the best and the brightest all over the galaxy and dying for the cause herself. A soldier beyond compare, what happens when there's no war left to fight?
1. Chapter 1

**WHATEVER SHAPE YOUR BURDENS TAKE ...**

_Pairing : Tali/Lady Shepard_

_Rating : M (Mature)_

_Feedback : FEED ME. _

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Chapter I : _It's difficult to stand on both feet, isn't it?_

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Kinetic barriers flared into existence; disintegrating the incoming rounds which hit their mark with brilliant flashes of blue and coruscating purple, reducing the surrounding cityscape to a barely-visible silhouette. Errant bullets exploded chunks of brittle concrete already worn away by the wind and the rain, covering anything and everything below in a pall of choking dust.

Giving way to the natural instinct to duck as a section of the ruined wall ahead shattered into powder and brick, Shepard threw herself to the ground. Wiping the mud free from her eyes and coughing her lungs clear, the Spectre pressed a fingertip against her earpiece and struggled to pick out anything more than white noise.

"Now would be a good time Garrus!" She hissed, turning her face away from a billowing cloud of vaporised mortar. A high-pitched screech almost forced her to tear the earpiece away, eyes clenching shut at the painful whine. "Garrus! Respond!"

"Shepard – I'm still transiting to a fire point," The Turian replied finally and almost reluctantly as if bothered by the interruption. "No opportunities to target as yet."

Personal barriers flashed into existence as the wall Shepard leant against fractured under the impact of a high-velocity round, breaking apart under the assault and leaving nothing between the Batarian thugs opposite, their rifle scopes and a certain Spectre's back. A deafening hail of rounds punctured the air where the wall had stood a moment before, too quickly and too many for the commander's barriers to cope with alone.

The N7 armour sounded a warning even as a single round broke through the battle-plastic; ignoring ineffective shielding, shredding flesh and tearing muscle before finally being stopped by the bone of the arm. Throwing herself to the side and dragging her face across splinters of shattered brick, Shepard gnashed her teeth together, enduring the agonising seconds it took for the N7's auto-injectors to cut into her wrist and deliver their cocktail of clotting agents, stimulants and morphine.

Whether down to nerves cut by the bullet, the numbing effect of the anaesthetic or a combination of both, Shepard cradled the useless arm in her lap. Chin tucked in to avoid the whizzing shots surrounding and (literally) painfully conscious of the lack of kinetic barriers, she was in no position to leap the divide and chase down the mercenaries like some Krogan locked in bloodlust.

Ignoring the pain of shifting her arm to bring the one good hand remaining up to her ear, Shepard tapped the frequency open. "I don't care if you can't see the end of your own mandibles, Garrus! Shoot something! Give them someone else to worry about!"

Ever business-like on the battlefield, the former C-Sec officer kept it short. "Understood."

The song of an automatic armour-piercing Turian sniper rifle was a mixture of the deafening clang of the high-calibre rounds as they punched through solid metal, the panicked cries of surprised thugs throwing themselves into cover and the aimless, ineffective return fire of those same mercenaries trying to hit what they couldn't see.

Effectively prevented from wielding anything larger than a pistol in lieu of having two working hands, Shepard checked the compact weapon's heatsink and drew a good lungful of air into her chest. Crouching with knees bent to almost touch the ground, she pushed off against the mud as a second volley of sniper fire reverberated about the shattered warehouse; re-directing virtually all of the mercenary fire away towards the ghostly Turian hidden somewhere in the upper level, out of sight.

Blackened fragments of twisted metal and the scorched rubble once making up the walls of the warehouse sank deep into the mud, underneath the force of the heavy boots pounding through. Shepard cleared the remains of a support girder standing three feet off the ground with a single leap, her remaining good arm tracking two pairs of eyes in one head as they widened with surprise and struggled to bring their rifle to bare.

Effectively rendered silent by the concussive bangs of Garrus' sniper rifle, a snap more fitting to breaking a branch from a tree took the Batarian off his feet, a single pistol round delivered between his four eyes. Throwing herself to the mud below, she pressed her back up against a storage box long since looted and left to rust, blue eyes watching a second mercenary as he popped his head around the edge of the box to find his comrade-in-arms.

The second Batarian rolled his eyes, dropping to his knees and crawling over to the still-warm corpse. Setting about picking it clean of weapons, credits and anything of value, he was considerably richer for all of the five seconds it took Shepard to deliver her heavy boot to the side of his exposed head.

Settling for the heatsinks the unconscious and the dead wouldn't have any further use for, Shepard cleared the thick reams of mud from the pistol's cooling baffles. "Keep it up Garrus – I'm closing in."

The deafening bangs from above continued, with a pause only long enough for the Turian to acknowledge. "Understood. Be careful."

Stepping over the dispatched pair below, she made use of the numerous holes and breaks in both sides of the storage container to allow her to glance straight through and catch sight of the target. Clad in cerulean-blue armour sculpted about the shoulders and waist, the warlord was certainly garbed as one would expect from a rich Batarian eager to show it. He Stood almost seven feet tall with a broad, bony chest – a fearsome opponent without considering the powered armour he wore which lent him a skin stronger than her own N7 suit, inclusive even of its kinetic barriers.

The triple-barrelled pistol he wielded would surely count as a heavy weapon in the hands of any mere human, were any mere human able to fire it without losing an arm to recoil. Even the armour's sophisticated dampeners built into his broad legs forced the warlord to take a step back with every shot. An out-and-out duel over distance was not an option.

As if to reinforce this point the warlord tracked an imagined target across the upper floor, squeezing the trigger before his hand had even come to a stop. An entire gantry crossing the vast expanse between the warehouse's walls sheared from its supports in writhing flames; crashing through storage crates, below, as a molten tangle of white-hot metal and boiling off the water present in the mud to fire great gouts of steam into the air.

As if the Batarian ringleader himself was all there was to worry about, a half-dozen of his warband were spread-out in a crescent shape ahead of their paymaster. Settling down into the mud Shepard spread felt the slight weight of her last remaining grenade in her palm, a flash-bang.

"My Kingdom for a little thermite paste," She sighed, twisting the remote detonator free of the grenade. Under cover of another barrage from above, Shepard cast the flash-bang over her head – eyes straining through the shattered storage box to catch sight of its landing point. Fingertip tapping gently against the detonation button held in hand, the Spectre watched the ordinance sink into the muddy quagmire.

Shepard tensed her arm as the warlord raised his weapon and took aim, driving the flat of her palm against the detonator as he squeezed the trigger. Clamping her gauntleted hands against her ears she turned her face away from the impending blindness. The deafening roar of super-heated air assaulted the commander's senses a moment before the blast front of the warlord's super-pistol sent her pitching forward, driving her face down against the mud.

Rolling onto her back and spitting her mouth clear of wet earth, Shepard's eyes opened to take in the smoking crumpled remains of the storage crate she had leaned against a moment before. Nostrils flaring at the unmistakable tang of burnt flesh, she forced herself to one knee and snatched up the pistol half-buried in the mud.

The warlord shook his four eyes clear, blinking away the blindness which had redirected his aim from the upper levels and the sniper lying on his belly to accidentally incinerate his own honour guard. Grunting in irritation, he pressed a boot against the nearest blackened Baatarian corpse – foot passing through the flesh, muscle and bone without the slightest real effort.

From the edge of his vastly superior peripheral vision, a pale face shimmered and flickered in a boot print filled with brown water. Cocking his head to the side, he saw a reflection of red hair and black body armour and a single chance to avoid the glinting pistol being brought to bare against the back of his skull.

The enormous Batarian stooped over awkwardly as the corpse laying prone ahead over a crate jerked violently, rearing up in response to the bullet which had been destined for his head passing into and through its burnt thigh. Bringing his pistol-turned-artillery piece to bare, a second bullet scraped against the underside of the barrel and forced the weapon from his armoured hand.

Great gouts of steam blew the caked mud from the sides of Shepard's pistol, heatsink overwhelmed and warbling uselessly in alert. Ejecting the spent sink to melt its way through the quagmire below, she got no closer to replacing it than tearing it from the webbing when an enormous fist crashed against her chestplate – taking the commander off her feet with enough force to break the battle-plastic and crack the skeletal support underneath.

Without the benefit of anything as helpful as a mass effect field the full weight of the N7 armour was turned against Shepard, sandwiching her brutally between a ceiling support which brought the Spectre to a sharp halt behind and the force of the shattered chest plate pressing against her ribs. Fracture lines danced around the depression left in the centre of the chest piece by the enormous Batarian gauntlet, gouging shards of broken armour free and raining them down into her lap.

Her mouth filled with the bitter metallic tang of blood, spilling over slack lips and running past her chin in crimson lines all the more striking against the commander's pale skin. Resting the back of her spinning head against the ceiling support, Shepard could not find enough wits about her to do much more than pant in a desperate attempt to ignore the searing pain of each breath as it pushed broken ribs wider apart.

The warlord did not bother to search for the enormous pistol he'd (unintentionally) taken out the entirety of his elite guard with earlier, hardly needing anything so destructive to put down a mere human – even a mere human who had by all rights already been killed once before. Driving armoured boots a foot into the slick mud with every powerful, thudding step, the Batarian fixed all four eyes on the slouched figure gasping for air pathetically at his feet.

He half-laughed, half-snorted at the sight before him. "So you're the Champion of the Pinkskins; Spectre and all-round war hero!"

"The hero of the Skyllian Blitz!" He shouted, offering a mock-bow at her presence. "Every Batarian should offer you a thanks – you put an end to a century wasted with embassies and diplomatic meetings and running around after the Council like Vorcha playthings. If it hasn't been for Pinkskins, we'd probably still be on the Citadel along with weaklings like the Elcor and the Jellyfish arguing over mining rights and settlement permits!"

The warlord stooped over, wrapping his gauntlet about Shepard's throat with just enough pressure to elicit a frown of pain on the semi-conscious Spectre's face. "You freed us, Pinkskin! Freed us to concentrate on the most important thing in this pitiful galaxy – Credits. Money. Wealth. That's all that matters. Every Batarian should thank you ..."

Without the slightest real effort the enormous alien hauled Shepard to her feet, breaking a third rib on the jerk upwards and staining his armour red with the crimson running freely across his gauntlet. He leaned forwards until the bridge of his nose practically driving against the commander's, teeth bared in a snarl.

"I could have made a lot of money from those Pinkskins you saved," He hissed. "I lost even more money in the men you killed saving them. All those credits weren't missed too badly when I heard you'd been spaced though – how does it feel to choke to death?"

Shepard squeezed her eyes open and shut, as if that would vent the pressure building inside her skull, fingers beginning to feel heavy and stiff. The numbness floated upwards passing beyond her knees and waist, the ever-diminishing oxygen still in her body being redirected ever-closer to the brain. Unable even to cough for the grip crushing her larnyx, bloodshot eyes rolled up towards unconsciousness and oblivion.

Hardly the weapon of choice in hand-to-hand combat, the Turian sniper rifle was nonetheless sturdy enough to emerge the winner in a contest against the Batarian skull. Buried too deeply in the simple, "honest" pleasure of killing the warlord could offer nothing beyond a cry of surprise as he staggered away from the impact clutching his temple, desperately trying to stem the purple ichor which ran freely over his features from torn flesh and muscle.

Shepard fell heavily towards the floor, saved the indignity of breaking another rib only by the strong arm of a former C-Sec officer and the power pack attachment point on the scruff of the N7's armoured collar. Coughing frothy blood clear of her throat she felt the familiar burning of cramp set-in, freshly-oxygenated blood arriving to wash away the waste products left to poison her muscles. "I softened him up for you ..."

Garrus nodded, snatching up the buckled rifle from the mud by the end of the barrel and driving its stock into the bridge of the Bataran's nose. The mercenary fell to one knee, face slick with blood pouring from broken cartilage and lacerated flesh. Perhaps a little too eager to close range and finish the fight, the Turian hefted the broken remains of his weapon and made to bring it down directly across the head of the warlord.

A powerful gauntlet crashed into Garrus' armoured chest – effortlessly passing through kinetic barriers designed to stop bullets rather than lunges and shattering the protective carapace over the Turian's front. He doubled over, wheezing loudly in pain as the Baatarian brought the flat of his wide knee up to crash against the sniper's face. Broken mandibles flapped feebly against Garrus' jaw as he staggered backwards, desperately shaking his snout as if that would clear the fog from his mind.

The fog was cleared – along with conscious thought – by the flat of the warlord's boot as he drove it against the Turian's skull. For a few moments Garrus teetered, arms held limply by his side with head angled to stare at the upper levels he had unleashed chaos from, so effectively, earlier. The mud provided a surprisingly gentle landing as he fell backwards, sinking into the boggy earth limply and unaware.

Shepard dug her fingertips into the churned ground, dragging herself, her broken armour and the broken ribs beneath across the mud and towards the fight so slowly as to be as well waiting for the planet to revolve beneath her. Glassy blue eyes followed each blow and rolled to the side to watch Garrus as he fell to the earth below, limply. Unable to bring herself any further forward the commander rolled onto her back, giving aching lungs a small respite.

Face virtually painted by his own spilled blood, the Batarian wasted no time in snatching up the sniper rifle which had so effectively broken his nose and skull earlier. Once, twice and three times he brought it down against the defenceless Turian – smashing bone and cartridge and pausing only to deliver a hard stamp against the already-shattered chest.

After the seventh strike, Garrus' chest stopped rising and after the eighth impact it fell empty.

Four eyes found Shepard's two and did not bother to hide the raw hatred, the seething disgust and the impending pleasure of the kill-without-honour. Breaking the twisted rifle into two halves with his armoured hands, the warlord nonchalantly tossed the debris over his shoulders and stalked towards the Spectre.

The Batarian raised a thick, armoured, slab-like boot up into the air. "Let's see you return from this, Pinkskin."

The boot hovered for a moment over her face, filling the entirety of Shepard's vision and everything she knew. When it came back down to earth a moment later, she knew no more.

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_To Be Continued ..._


	2. Chapter 2

**WHATEVER SHAPE YOUR BURDENS TAKE ...**

_Pairing : Tali/Lady Shepard_

_Rating : M (Mature)_

_Feedback : FEED ME. _

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_Chapter II : Treading water_

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Shepard's head jerked to the side without warning, glassy eyes flashing open as her consciousness returned in a single, panicked moment rather than allowing her to gradually come to her senses. The metal bulkheads surrounding were alien, unfamiliar and the bed she laid upon didn't seem right under the arch of her tense back. It took several seconds for her memory to follow the rest of her mind back into the waking world, making the surroundings of the Normandy SR-2 familiar – f not quite home.

A thin sheen of sweat shone across her forehead and chest, trapping the covers against her itchy skin. Pushing the duvet off the other side of the bed and to the decking, Shepard swung her legs over the edge and pressed her bare feet down against the warm metal of the floor. Brushing the tangled red locks which had flopped over her face during the course of the night back behind an ear, she puffed out her cheeks with a sigh.

Shepard did not need the clock atop the bedside desk to tell her it had only been an hour or so since she had climbed under the covers, though it nonetheless obliged with bright green numbers. Burying her face in her hands to massage the darkened circles framing each eye, the Spectre strained her ears for the sounds of shipboard life and anything out of the ordinary.

Almost the entire length of the frigate aft, the ship's Tantalus-class mass effect core surged with the barely-repressed energies of Element Zero; providing the power required to accelerate the SR-2 beyond lightspeed, split mighty starships in half with the Thanix Cannons or absorb and turn away the terrible destructive power of a Collectors' cutting beam courtesy of refractive-barriers.

Elsewhere an intelligence composed of networks and circuits, rather than neurons and cells, brought together the Normandy's schizophrenic nature; marrying Human, Turian and Asari technology together seamlessly. Between the drive core and EDI the Normandy's crew bustled and busied themselves with maintenance, diagnostics, exercises and wherever possible, relaxation – the latter increasingly more often as the SR-2 found itself chasing Reaper shadows and half-truths for months on end.

Pulling the waistband of her trousers up and the vest of her duty fatigues down, Shepard levered herself up from the bed and stifled a yawn.

Free of any planetary atmosphere there was no true concept of night or day on a starship. There was only an arbitrary division between the two for the sake of it being far easier to run a ship accordingly, than train a crew and any number of internal body clocks to forget living under a sun and a sky for their entire lives previously.

Armoured shutters sat over viewports and windows to block out starlight, or the kaleidoscopic ribbons of colour which danced across the hull at faster-than-light speeds. Main lighting was limited to side lamps running in rows above and below, doing little more than providing enough light to see which way one was walking. Only a handful of the many dozens of stations operated, contributing the glare of their orange screens to the comfortable, very early morning darkness.

Shepard had grown up calling any number of starships home – all of them Alliance save the very recent exception of the SR-2. From the cramped confines of planetary patrol ships, designed to safeguard a single system without even their own FTL capability and crewed permanently by four or less, to enormous armoured Dreadnoughts; home to thousands and bristling with weaponry capable of slagging other juggernaut-sized ships to molten metal, or laying waste to an entire world.

She had spent decades under the pretend-system of day and night, never sleeping poorly for it and so it could not be blamed for whatever it was that kept her awake and walking the halls of the ship at such an ungodly hour. Only two other crewmen – both Ship-Lieutenants according to the paramilitary structure of Cerberus – shared her wakefulness, cradling dented metal mugs filled with lukewarm coffee and doing their best to be interested in what their displays told them.

Shepard answered their salutes dutifully as she made her way through the CIC and the elongated "neck" corridor, which connected the ship's command centre to its navigational centre. Probably reluctantly yielding control of the helm to EDI, Flight Lieutenant Jeff "Joker" Moreau was elsewhere, snatching a few hours rest and inflicting his unique brand of sarcasm on whoever was unlucky enough to take the bunk beneath his.

Dropping herself onto the padded seat with a puff of disturbed faux-leather, Shepard leaned back against the headrest and reached a hand over the flight controls. Squeezing her eyes shut against the sudden brightness flooding into the cockpit as the armoured shutter opposite retracted, the commander settled on watching the multi-coloured tendrils of energy, shimmering and twisting in the Normandy's mass effect field, to pass the time.

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An hour or maybe two later and feeling no more relaxed or ready to close her eyes, Shepard's attention moved from the coruscating display beyond the Normandy's hull to the blue segments forming up beneath a sphere of grid lines. "What's up, EDI? How's the ship?"

Performing a billion calculations a second at the same time as making a minor course correction and flushing the starboard-midship number four thruster tank, the Normandy's artificial intelligence found all of these tasks trivial compared to the complexity and resources demanded in holding a simple conversation with a living, breathing person.

"The ship is operating normally, Shepard," The AI answered almost instantly. "Can I help you with something?"

The commander shrugged her shoulders slightly. "Anything on Cerberus, yet? We destroyed a facility the Illusive Man was beyond desperate to get his hands on, and now we're flying around the galaxy in his ship – his very expensive ship – along with the best and brightest he had to offer. They've been keeping us waiting a little too long for my taste ..."

"I have made some progress on the information forwarded to me by Doctor T'Soni, however it is slow work – the data is heavily encrypted and re-sequenced. It may take several weeks to translate all of the information enclosed."

"We've been chasing ghosts, stories and shadows for months now," Shepard sighed. "A few more weeks isn't going to bring down the sky. What've you got so far?"

"It is unlikely Cerberus will be able to turn their attention to the Normandy, or you, for some time. Over the last sixteen months the Systems Alliance has been engaged in a sustained political, covert and military operation to discover and expunge opposition paramilitary groups which might act to endanger the Alliance's new pan-galactic considerations."

Shepard frowned, absent-mindedly rubbing the back of her neck. "There's nothing new in that – the Alliance went on a crusade of sorts to root out extremist groups a few months before I became a Spectre. They closed down One Earth, Fist of Humanity and a few others. They went after Cerberus, or at least what they thought was Cerberus, but there's no comparison between them and groups like One Earth. It's easy to track down a few nutjobs spamming networks with home-made manifestos and scrawling racist insults across bulkheads ...

" … But chasing down a pan-galactic outfit, organised more like a military than a bunch of thugs with a few Assault Rifles, operating their own custom-built FTL-capable starships? With an ear, an eye and a hand on dozens of worlds? The Alliance didn't even get close."

Although she did not need to be reminded that a lot had changed since the simple days of Shepard. Annika, Commander (N7) – United Systems Alliance, EDI was nothing if not exhaustive. "The Lazarus Project, responsible for reactivating you, the design and construction of the SR-2 as well as the cost of my development and the recruitment of the ship's crew demanded a great percentage of Cerberus' total resources.

"For the first time many Cerberus Cells were forced to co-operate directly with each other in order to fund these projects, increasing the level of inter-dependency and leaving the greater organisation more vulnerable to outside attention--"

"That was sixteen months ago," Shepard interrupted. "I doubt Cerberus has spent almost a year and a half sitting on its hands."

"There were two immediate consequences to Cerberus as a result of the events of sixteen months ago," EDI continued smoothly, incapable of being annoyed at the interruption. "For the majority of its existence, Cerberus operated as unobtrusively as possible – going to great lengths to keep its members, projects and interests hidden. This subterfuge made it extremely difficult for outside forces, like the Alliance, to gain even a basic understanding of Cerberus' operations and procedures.

"The beginning of your mission changed this. A Cerberus-flagged warship, based on technology supposedly still treated as classified, operating openly through Citadel Space; even visiting The Citadel itself and carrying a council-appointed Spectre on-board. Before your mission began – before you had even been resurrected – Cerberus was, while considered undesirable, tolerated by the upper echelons of the Alliance."

An auxiliary screen flickered to life, casting an orange glow against Shepard's flesh as it scrolled with a thousand lines of text at speeds far beyond any mere human capability to read. "Some of the data transmitted by Doctor T'Soni suggests likely infiltration of various Alliance commands by Cerberus operatives, prior to your original battle against Saren and the Geth.

"The SR-2's existence and high-profile presence likely made any attempt by operatives, or sympathetic Flag Officers to mitigate Cerberus' impact on the Alliance untenable. Your decision to destroy the Collectors' facility not only denied the Illusive Man a return on his investment, in the form of the cost of the combined projects undertaken to reach it but also denied him his original investments in the form of the Normandy, her crew and you.

"Many Citadel Council member-races are less than united; the Krogan only being the most obvious example. The Council itself however was, until the ascension of Humanity, entirely composed of races with a single governing body and a populace whose loyalty was by and large secure. The Salarians, Asari and Turians control all aspects of their native military and political structure.

"When Humanity took a seat on the council, Cerberus became more than a "minor" problem to the Alliance. Anything which could be seen to present Mankind as less than united could become a political weapon, used to block human interests and goals."

Shepard nodded, doing her best to snatch whatever pieces of information she could glean from the auxiliary screen as it continued to scroll at impossible speeds. "Sounds familiar – Admirals with dreadnought-sized egos and military brinkmanship."

"From what the data received from Doctor T'Soni suggests, the Alliance decided to move against Cerberus when news of the Normandy's successful transition of the Omega-4 Mass Effect Relay became common knowledge. As far as the Alliance was concerned, Cerberus ceased be a threat broadly comparable to the Blue Suns, Eclipse or the Blood Pack and became a direct challenge to the position of the Alliance as humanity's governing body and sole military power.

"Interestingly Doctor T'Soni found a significant amount of classified data relating to among other things, the SR-2 and Project Lazarus in the hands of the Alliance. Considering the reputation Cerberus has acquired in silent-running and information security, it is highly unlikely they could have secured this information from the Illusive Man by conventional intelligence-gathering means.

Shepard turned her head towards the blue, wire-mapped shapes making up EDI's avatar-of-sorts. "A mole? With access to Cerberus' most secret projects?"

"The Alliance begun Operation Unity – the effort to destroy Cerberus as an effective pan-galactic organisation – one month after the successful completion of your mission. While I cannot be certain, my best guess would be that the Alliance opted to delay the operation until the intentions of the SR-2, and you, could be ascertained. Since we have not had communication with any Alliance ships or installations, it is likely our intentions were leaked."

"Best guess?" Shepard repeated, eyebrow crooked in surprise. "You've been spending too much time around Joker."

For a personality of ones and zeroes, EDI sounded almost affronted. "Jeff encourages me to accept that sometimes I cannot have all the data necessary to reach a certain conclusion and that, sometimes, I must make a guess with the best facts at my disposal."

"I can't argue with that," The commander nodded, holding a palm up in mock surrender. "As for leaking our intentions … Miranda?"

"While there are only two people on-board with any actual knowledge of Project Lazarus, Jacob does not have sufficient seniority to be considered a credible source of information. Miranda was project leader, as well as being the personal confidante of the Illusive Man. Her refusal to carry out his orders in overriding your attempt to destroy the Collectors facility, coupled with her general disillusionment with Cerberus, makes her the most likely candidate."

Shepard nodded, mulling the information over as she stifled a yawn and shifted in the pilot's chair. "Do you have anything more on Operation Unity?"

"I am still decrypting Doctor T'Soni's data," EDI reminded. "I cannot say more for sure, other than it is still on-going and Cerberus has been forced to "go to ground". That is why I do not believe they will be actively pursuing the Normandy with all of their focus, although that is no reason to be less cautious. The SR-2 represents a substantial investment on the part of the Illusive Man – it is foolish to think he does not want it back, Shepard."

Nodding her head and finally, thankfully feeling the tug of sleep through weary bones and muscle, the commander levered herself up to standing. "Good night. Thanks for the heads-up and keep an eye out, EDI."

"Understood – it is time for me to wake Jeff. Logging you out, Shepard."

Parting her lips, a frown creasing her forehead, the Spectre settled on a shrug of her shoulders and a sigh. She was never going to understand those two.

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Predictably, the urge to sleep did not spend long with Shepard; gifting her a few choice dreams half-remembered, mumbled and even then quickly fading to nothing as she rolled out of bed, groggily. A few hours had passed, at least, in rest of a sort and if there had been grass underfoot and a sky overhead, the sun would just be climbing up to begin a new day. As it stood gun-metal grey bulkheads stood underneath, to the sides and above.

Even if there stood a window to glance out of, the stars would look precisely the same.

Cupping the small of her back as she rose from the bed, working out the kink of muscles which had not really been given a fair chance to relax in the night, Shepard pressed her fingertip against a wall-mounted pad opposite to summon EDI. Unlike the rest of the Normandy, where the ship's AI had full and automatic control and surveillance, the Commanding Officer's cabin was excluded from the system.

EDI's avatar sprang to life from the generating plate mounted nearby, at Shepard's invitation. "Assemble what's left of the team in the FTL-Comm. Room in ten minutes."

"Understood," The serene voice clipped before blinking out of existence.

Tugging the vest up and over her shoulders before dropping it haphazardly to the floor of the compact washroom, Shepard braced her arms against the sink and found the eyes of the reflection in the mirror ahead. A fingertip traced the scar which ran from just below her left ear, along the line of her jawbone, pressing against the darker flesh which stood out so obviously against the paleness surrounding.

Shrapnel from a fragmentation grenade had sliced the line into her face and tissue, towards the end of Operation Enduring Freedom – a typical Alliance "Fly the flag" operation undertaken every year, without fail, to reassure Human Colonies closest to Batarian space they were not forgotten. Twenty four years old and no closer to succeeding, it had nonetheless been Shepard's conduct and gallantry during Enduring Freedom which had secured a promotion to Lieutenant Commander.

Not unlike some bizarre parody of a medal permanently attached to her chest, Shepard had carried the scar ever since.

Of course that scar had not graced her face for almost eighteen months – it had been removed along with every other "imperfection", courtesy of the incredible technologies employed to bring her back from the dead. Her fingertip traced only soft, pliant skin without the hardened, rough scar tissue to disturb.

Dark circles hung underneath her eyes; mottled-brown marks of the chronic sleeplessness and listlessness which had shaken Shepard awake whenever a dream promised to begin, or made her legs restless and eager to stand whenever a moment of peace presented itself. The reflection which stared back was so very tired and gaunt.

The job of a solder was to fight, and fight well. It did not matter if he or she wore the rank of an enlistee or the bars of an Admiral, taking to battle to secure victory was all that mattered. Sometimes that battlefield was not two great armies clashing – mounds of earth exploded high into the sky to blot out the sun, entire mountains splintering to razor-sharp fragments of rock the size of battle tanks under the mass accelerator fire of orbiting Dreadnoughts.

Men and women dying in their dozens or hundreds or thousands to capture a building, a street, a city or an entire world. Many more dying from behind the windowpanes of aircraft or starships, without ever seeing the face of the enemy who killed them.

Sometimes the battlefield was one of information – plying the roads between the stars, looking for informed worlds and their knowledgeable residents. Tracking your enemy while building the army required to bring the fight to them, conscious of being the first to strike and the first to strike hard.

Shepard had never failed in this. A distinguished career as an officer had merely been the introduction; tracking Saren over a half-dozen worlds, painstakingly piecing together the true enormity of the Reaper threat. Facing down the the rogue Spectre's Geth, while assembling the greatest operatives one could hope to find in the galaxy.

Sending some of them to die, like Kaiden, so the greater good might prevail. Allowing for the survival of a species long-thought utterly extinct, a species famed for terrorising galactic civilisation to the point of requiring the Krogan to be deployed as some enormous interstellar army. As the Asari had confirmed on Ilium the Rachni prospered on some distant world, orbiting some forgotten star.

What part they might still have to play, Shepard could not say.

Overcoming something as impossibly final as death to lead the fight against the Reapers a second time. Assembling a new team, going beyond the role of soldier in gifting each the peace and focus necessary to give their all. Some gave everything that could be given – life itself – and Shepard hoped they kept that peace with them, wherever it was they were taken to.

Death aside, they passed into the unreachable centre of the galaxy to strike a hammer blow against the personal agents of the coming galactic apocalypse. A second unlikely victory in the face of overwhelming odds.

Shepard had failed as a soldier for sixteen long months; unable to find the battlefield whether it be conventional or information-based. Burning a trail that criss-crossed the Milky Way brought no clues to the next specific threat, months spent without firing in much more anger than to ward off the occasional foolish pirate or cleave his ship in half if such a ward went unheeded.

Hours spent doing paperwork as if, ridiculously, she had become desk-bound overnight – filing for the expenses available to her as a Spectre, necessary to maintain a ship and crew through their fruitless search.

The crew of the Normandy would never openly doubt their Commanding Officer – their eyes were strong with respect and appreciation, not least for still being alive to express it. Professional to the absolute and with painful, personal experience of precisely what was at stake, not a single one of them doubted that the commander had a plan.

Shepard had no plan. Sixteen months had been spent trying to form one, sixteen months wasted trying to discover their opponent's. The Spectre might as well order Joker to head for the rim and fly out into the void between the galaxies, for lack of any appreciable idea or hunch. She had been reduced to hoping, rather than knowing; hoping that if they flew for long enough the Reapers would spontaneously reveal what they intended next.

Wherever Harbinger and his ilk floated, they were keeping stubbornly quiet.

Pressing a pale forehead against the tiles as the shower head spat to life, Shepard emptied her lungs in a long sigh. She was a solider – a capable one, perhaps even a good one. Her job was to fight.

Closing her eyes as red hair soaked through, settling over her features, the commander could truly admit to herself – and absolutely no-one else – that for the first time she was lost.

What was there for a soldier to do, if there was no fight left to find?

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"Commander!" Jacob barked with a sharp salute, almost before the actuators pulling apart both halves of the door to the Comm. chamber had begun their work. Nodding by way of return Shepard cast her eyes around the precious few seats still filled, occasionally locking eyes with those she had hand-picked to achieve the impossible, but more often meeting nothing but an empty space.

Resting against the oak-fashioned railing, arms folded across her chest and expression utterly unreadable, Miranda simply dipped her chin by way of hello. From the opposite end slouched in a seat, Garrus waved a claw informally while Joker swung around in his, tapping a beat against the edge of the chair.

The reactions were different, with some hidden and others not so well. For all his desire to bring justice and fairness to the greater galaxy, Garrus understood the importance of patience. So while he undoubtedly chafed under the boredom of weapon calibration tests, the Turian was content to wait out the barren spell, so to speak.

Jacob was a man of duty and Shepard did not doubt that if she simply held the Normandy still, waiting out the saturation of the CO2 scrubbers and the last drops of Element Zero from the drive core, he would be satisfied enough to stand by her side. A reliable man and a good soldier, he was content to follow his Commanding Officer and her plan.

Whatever plan that might, or might not, be.

As for Miranda, it was impossible to tell what she might choose for breakfast let alone anything as deep as personal motivations. Originally nothing more than a mouthpiece for Cerberus propaganda and the will of the Illusive Man, she had taken an embryonic step towards total self-sufficiency and individuality sixteen months ago, by baulking at her former leader's attempt at countermanding Shepard's orders.

What was clear however, was that the striking young woman was not at her happiest with the lull in their battle against the Reapers. Shepard supposed there was only so long one could sit in an office and satisfy oneself with the duties of XO, pretending to devote energies to crew rosters and ship's business while the ultimate threat to galactic civilisation hung out in the blackness between galaxies, doing gods-knew-what.

Sheperd could see that each of them remained out of a sense of loyalty, an obligation on their part to continue this endless search for the information that would only then allow them to risk everything for a third time. For the remnants of the team to leave to find their own paths would be no shame or slur; each one had contributed to buying the Milky Way a little breathing room from the repeat threat of its complete scouring.

Shepard suppressed the urge to sigh. Others had found new opportunities – the ship's excitable Salarian, Doctor-Singer-Scientist Mordin, had been unable to turn down an invitation to re-join the STG from the very highest levels of the Salarian government, even then only accepting after seeking the commander's approval.

The ship's unofficial engineering virtuoso, Tali, had returned to the Migrant Fleet to find a little well-deserved familiarity and safety amongst her people, following the exhausting attack on the Collectors. She had been perhaps the least well-equipped or experienced to face such hardship – such pain and loss and suffering. Yet with tremendous spirit the young Quarian had emerged with not simply confidence, having already earned that against Saren and his Geth but the strength of character some members of her own Admiralty did not possess.

It was not the role of a Commanding Officer to frustrate and hold back his charges merely to keep him or herself relevant. Those gathered around her and the crew of the Normandy themselves were treading water; existing but neither living nor dead, spending their months flying through the blackness between the stars with nothing to show for the fuel they burned.

It was a charade to be ended.

"It's been sixteen months ..." Shepard begun, getting no further than four words before the ship's Artificial Intelligence, EDI, appeared courtesy of her avatar on the front of the oak railing. "I am sorry to interrupt Shepard, but we are receiving an incoming transmission. It is Alliance."

Frustrated by months of dead-ends and circular whispers, the collective interest of the chamber piqued by several orders of magnitude, Shepard being amongst them and in no mood to prolong the suspense. "Put it through."

"It is not a communication," EDI clarified. "It is a set of coordinates."

Joker climbed to his feet, the playful smile across his face replaced by the seriousness of duty. "Commander?" He asked, tipping the brim of his cap towards the door leading eventually to the cockpit.

Shepard nodded, excusing the Lieutenant. "Where do the coordinates lead?"

"Skepsis System, Sigurd's Cradle--"

"Franklin Colony," The commander interrupted, her gut beginning to twist as memories of the attempt to prevent Batarian radicals from destroying the Alliance colony with its own Javelin defence missiles flooded back. "I remember. Best possible speed, EDI."

The charade would have to continue, for now.

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**To Be Continued …**


	3. Chapter 3

**WHATEVER SHAPE YOUR BURDENS TAKE ...**

_Pairing : Tali/Lady Shepard_

_Rating : M (Mature)_

_Feedback : FEED ME. _

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_Chapter III : Admiral, this is an almost totally new Enterprise._

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Franklin could be one of any number of human holdings scattered across the greater Milky Way; pre-fabricated pressure domes, boxes and habitation modules painted a utilitarian, uninspiring grey and resting on support legs driven deep beneath the alien soil they squatted over. Compact – some might say claustrophobic – quarters, where the only way to find some solitude might be to don a pressure suit and venture out into an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, when there was any atmosphere at all to even find.

Unlike the majority of human holdings scattered across the greater Milky Way, Franklin was a pioneers village, a brave new home bristling with the armaments and protection of full civilisation. Buried deep beneath the mineral-rich rock, powerful inter-planetary missiles stood anchored inside armoured silos; capable of withstanding orbital bombardment from even cruiser-sized starships and acting as a potent warning to any vessels foolish enough to bring their mass accelerators to bare from above.

Carving smooth roads-of-sorts through the ragged, splintered landscape, launch runways led away from the mouths of reinforced hangars housing dozens of fast-response fighters. Armed with a variety of modular weapons, these craft provided the flexibility necessary to deter the near-endless threat of the roving bands of slavers, pirates and mercenaries pouring from the gaping wound that was the Terminus Systems.

High above the anti-ship missiles, their silos and the fighter screens a vast complex circled Franklin precisely as the colony circled its parent world, Watson. Reflecting the light from the system sun against an array of docking ports, replenishment bays and refuelling booms these logistical yards provided a welcome harbour to the starships of the Systems Alliance Navy too big to settle on solid rock below.

Even these intricate, shining metal trusses slipping slowly through the starry sky did not make Franklin unique. What separated this colony from its compatriots, instead, was the enormous crater plunging deep into the rock and spreading for kilometres in every direction – a painful gouge as if some great god had swept a handful of the world away. Radial cracks and deep fissures spread further beyond the crater's perimeter, forming canyons and valleys recorded on no map or survey.

Franklin had not been wounded by the broadside of a powerful starship hanging in orbit, for which the enormous Javelin defence missiles had been installed to protect against. Franklin had not been cut deeply by the immoral, random raid of a slaver or pirate force for which dozens of fighters had stood ready to turn away. Instead Franklin's three thousand plus colonists had been vaporised, if given the mercy of a quick death, or simply left to asphyxiate by the very weapons installed to make them safe.

The colony's infrastructure – its capacity to exist in a (reasonably) self-sufficient manner – had survived and with that, a vital bulwark against the wanton aggression of the lawless Terminus Systems had been retained. The garden world Watson, whose sole moon had scoured itself of all life, thus retained vital inter-planetary defences even if those defences had culled thousands of colonists at the hands of tampering Batarians.

The Normandy painted cobalt exhaust lines across the stars as it burned in-system, giving wide berth to outer worlds of ice and rock and long, lazy belts of asteroids and their fragments. Craning her neck over the top of Joker's headrest, eyes narrowing in concentration, Shepard did her best to pick out Franklin from the blackness of the surrounding space; palm held across the forehead to shield her gaze from the system's sun.

Joker's nimble fingers danced over the interface generated across his lap, tension etched across his features as he spared a glance at the avatar shimmering to the left. "EDI – what've you got?"

"The colony's defences, industrial centres and superstructure appear to be intact, however I am unable to locate meaningful signs of life on the surface. There is a geographical feature consistent with an impact crater centred over the residential complexes; tectonic damage extrapolation suggests it is consistent with a Javelin IPBM. Additionally I am detecting several vessels in orbit."

Shepard's gaze shifted to one of the auxiliary monitors, now displaying Franklin in more detail than she could ever hope to achieve with her own eyes. "I remember ..." She sighed, watching the Normandy's sensors illustrate the Javelin missile impact in a jarring red. "Can you identify the ships?"

"Standby," EDI responded coolly. Laying a hand against the pilot's seat in front, the commander managed at least to find the slightest, somewhat bizarre comfort. Despite dealing with the lives of countless billions in relation to the Reaper threat, including having to order some to surrender theirs so that others might live long enough to make the difference, her own personal sorrow for the colonists lost at the hands of their own defences had not diminished.

The decision she had ultimately taken was as painful now as it had been when first made all those months ago.

"I have isolated the vessels' transponder frequencies – they are Systems Alliance. I am attempting to identify the individual vessels."

"Thanks," Joker muttered, tugging at the peak of his cap. "There could be worse places to fly a ship with Cerberus' logo painted on the hull, I suppose."

Shepard said nothing, her thoughts elsewhere.

"Frigate, Dunkirk-class: SSV Sevastopol; Frigate, Dunkirk-class: SSV Somme; Frigate, Normandy-class : SSV Okinawa. Cruiser, Athens-class: SSV Edinburgh; Cruiser, Athens-class: SSV San Diego. Carrier, Invincible-class : SSV Alan Turing. Dreadnought, Kilimanjaro-class: SSV Orizaba."

Pursing his lips nervously as EDI finished reading out the analysis, Joker glanced over his shoulder, looking for the eyes of his commanding officer. "Commander – Permission to give in to my fear, turn the Normandy about and get the hell out of here?"

"Hold your course," Shepard ordered tersely, leaving no room for sarcasm let alone an argument. "Last I knew, the Orizaba was Fifth Fleet flagship--"

"We are receiving docking instructions for the Orizaba," EDI interrupted.

Shepard straightened her back, with an idea of exactly who was waiting for her a few kilometres away beginning to form. "Take us in Joker – best not to keep the Admiral waiting."

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The SR-1 had been a joint collaboration between Human and Turian aerospace engineering, producing a starship which resembled the rest of the Alliance fleet only tenuously. Her hull boasted organic curves and a tapering silhouette, more suited to a vessel carved from some great block of impossibly lightweight marble than riveted and welded into existence. The first Normandy was not so much built from sheets of metal and support, as sculpted under an artist's eye. In the world – or between worlds – of precise mathematical concepts and unforgiving laws of physics which starships called home, the SR-1 somehow managed to be both functional and beautiful.

Due in no small part, undoubtedly, to the replacement of Turian expertise with "homegrown" Humanity the SR-2 drew a diluted lineage from the first Normandy. Curves were straightened, panel lines more prominent, and the porcelain-like appearance of fragility buried beneath Cerberus' armour plating. Nonetheless, the newest ship to carry the name Normandy still bared little resemblance to the Alliance Task Force it now passed through; even less so with the politically-charged livery painted against its glinting hull.

The Orizaba had no grand design philosophy to match the SR-2 beyond whatever design permitted the most powerful broadside to be brought to bare at once. Where the Normandy relied on the speed and manoeuvrability of a frigate, the Fifth Fleet flagship was ponderous to turn and lethargic to fly. She did not rely on stomach-churning aerobatics – her guns would track anything across the black; a salvo which found its mark from the dreadnought would surely cleave a ship like the Normandy in half.

Being slowly phased out of service for the newer Everest-class the SSV Orizaba had begun to show her age, the lines between the panels of the bulkheads running a bright silver where the paint had long since been rubbed away. Machinery ran a little louder than it might have done when first installed all those years before, while pressure doors were harder to shut as their dented metal runners dug into perished rubber seals.

Shepard pressed her palm against the bulkhead wall, feeling the dents of hands thrown out to steady struggling crewman during years of ship-to-ship combat gone by. She could feel the subtle bumps of paint spread a little too thickly in places, or the brush lines if she squeezed her eyes almost shut in concentration. The Orizaba was an old ship and she would probably not be much longer in commissioned service.

Nonetheless there was something refreshingly honest about the ship. It bore the scratches and bumps of its service proudly; each dent in the hull a testament to the strength of the spaceframe, which carried its fragile crew between the impossibly deadly void of space as they made their way from star to star. Unlike the incredible grandeur of the Asari-built Citadel flagship Destiny Ascension – as much a work of art as a weapon of war – or the Turian ethos, some of which could be found in both incarnations of the Normandy, the ships of the System Alliance fleets were unrefined.

They were mighty vehicles of total war; bristling with powerful weapons to lay waste to enemies and protected by thick slabs of armour which could turn aside even the most withering fire. Each bent weld, each dent and each scratch formed a litany of honour perhaps seen by other races as another example of Humanity's crudeness but, to Shepard at least, a reassuring reminder of home and where she had come from.

"I'm not used to being shown up in my own flagship," A gravely voice interrupted. Shepard spun on the spot, her hand snapping to her brow only a fraction of a second behind her eyes in finding the figure opposite. "Admiral Hackett," She greeted stiffly.

"At ease," He dismissed with a wave of his hand and a gesture to the simple metal table and chairs dominating the small room. More suited to storing spare parts than holding meetings, the chamber was completely unremarkable save the three-pane observation window which offered a dorsal view of the SR-2 below. "Coffee?"

Shepard nodded, pushing the metal mug in front of her towards the dented percolator held in the hands of the Admiral. Leaning against the tabletop, Hackett made short work of filling both cups and set the pot down with a muted clatter. "It's damned good to see you again, Shepard. How long's it been since we talked without the entire galaxy between us?"

The Admiral levered himself off the table, cup held in hands. "It wasn't a rhetorical question, Commander, but too long regardless. You've done some fine work for me – some damn fine work for the Alliance as a whole, so I'm sorry it took dying and then coming back to life before I got around to issuing you an invite."

Shepard resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably in her seat, finding absolutely no desire in even the mention of the Lazarus Project. "I see you made full Admiral – haven't you paid off the Orizaba yet?"

Hackett offered a small grin as he took a gulp of the noxious, black caffeine. "I can't find another chair I really like – besides, it's important I stay comfortable when I'm at my desk, signing all the paperwork that got me this extra star on my collar."

"She's a good ship, Shepard," He mused with a rap of his knuckles against the bulkhead. "She's getting a little long in the tooth, maybe, and the door to my cabin squeaks like there's more than one mouse living in the walls, but it's never let me or the Alliance down. Survived the battle of the Citadel, after all."

Glancing towards the commander, he dipped his head. "It might have happened eighteen months ago but for what it's worth, I'm sorry about the Normandy … The SR-1, that is. Damned fine ship and a damned fine crew both shot in the back by something they didn't even see coming."

Shepard didn't need the Admiral to remind her – from the first coruscating beam to the final breath her burning, choked lungs took in vain, she could no more forget the destruction of the first Normandy than she could find the words to express the darkness of the thoughts that sometimes took her. Thoughts which replaced meaningful sleep with lucid, waking dreams which one could not tell apart from the real world.

"A fine ship and a fine crew," She chorused in agreement.

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Hackett's gaze turned to the window, and dipped down to the second Normandy held tightly in the docking clamps slightly aft. "I can't make my mind up about that ship, though.

"Don't get me wrong, Shepard, it's one impressive build. The paint on the main production run of the Normandy-class was hardly dry before this thing started raising eyebrows and turning heads. I've seen the technical readouts; those Thanix cannons put out the equivalent of a cruiser's broadside in firepower and those multi-facet barriers would be more at home on a Dreadnought. Asari, aren't they?"

The commander nodded, eliciting another grin from the Admiral. "Not surprised I know that much, huh? Cerberus isn't half as clever as it likes to think …"

"Something doesn't sit right with me about it," Hackett continued, returning his eyes to the ship moored to his own, below. "It feels perverted – it looks like one of ours, but it's not, is it? It wasn't designed and commissioned with the traditions of the Navy. The Normandy-class' specialisation is stealth but back any of her ships into a corner and she'll show you her teeth. This thing, outside … It's designed for sneaking.

"Not intelligence-gathering, not reconnaissance behind enemy lines, this thing embodies Cerberus perfectly. Slinking about in the shadows, without a shred of morality to be found unless it fits in with their ideological nonsense. Self-appointed guardians of humanity, Shepard … With the resources to build a ship like this and yet I don't remember them turning up at the Battle of the Citadel. Do you?"

Good men and women – like me and you – fought there. Saved the station, saved the Destiny Ascension and the Council. Some never came back, but I don't remember seeing any of our ships sporting orange flashes and black diamonds. Still, I didn't make Admiral by being naïve and the resources they gave you to face the Collectors were beyond what the Alliance could politically afford. They were a necessary evil ..."

Bringing the cool dregs swirling about the bottom of his mug up to his lips, Hackett turned away from the window. "An evil no longer necessary, however. The Collectors are gone and whatever the Reapers are planning, I suspect it'll have to be a damned bit more direct. We've no more use for their cloak-and-dagger nonsense; all things being equal that ship out there'll be the last reminder of the Illusive Man and his galactic games."

Shepard glanced at her own still-full mug, setting it back down on the tabletop now that it no longer warmed her pale hands. "Should I be worried, Admiral?"

"You're a big damn hero, Shepard," Hackett snorted as he perched himself on the edge of the table. "I didn't much like the idea of you running around the galaxy wearing a white diamond on your sleeve; I don't think anyone did. I also didn't much like the idea of you being dead, so having you fly that thing out there about the galaxy to give the Reapers another bloody nose was small recompense for them bringing you back. Hell I'd say it was deal of the century …

The Admiral set his mug down on the table. "I haven't asked you back here to be thrown in the brig, Shepard – I haven't asked you back to bust your ass back to Lieutenant and take your ship away to be pulled apart and tinkered with. As good as it was to see you again and as long overdue as it was, there's an ulterior motive and something you can help me with, once again."

Shepard almost breathed a sigh of relief at the revelation. A creeping worry had begun in the pit of her gut, using her spine to climb upwards towards the forefront of her mind. As Joker had only too frequently complained of, the Alliance had made a poor show of treating the Normandy's crew following the loss of the SR-1. "Councillor" Anderson aside, they'd offered virtually no support in making the most of a difficult situation regarding the Collectors; Shepard would not have been truly surprised if the SSV Orizaba had been the prison ship to carry her home in disgrace.

Part and parcel of a galaxy which became ever more complicated, ever more convoluted and difficult to find one's place in with every passing year.

"Saren is long dead and scatted to space and the Collectors are gone," Hackett continued. "The Reapers out there, up to something, but in the meantime they're quiet. There's the usual nonsense about – slavers and pirates in the Terminus Systems, those god-damn mercenaries claiming whole planets as their own personal fortresses but nothing of concern on the galactic scale."

The Admiral climbed to his feet, hands clasped behind his back. "That's about to change, Commander. Those tuxedo-wearing, so-called "secret agents" up in the SIS, attached to the Federal Security Services, have apparently stumbled upon some useful intel while seducing beautiful alien women and dining out every night on taxpayers' expense. This thing's been cooking away for longer than you or I or our parent's parents have been alive, but it's about to explode.

"It's the Quarians; looks like they've finally gotten tired of flying around the galaxy aimlessly. 'Suppose I can't really blame them in that – No matter how long I spend cooped up on Arcturus Station or on fleet service, I can always look forward to feeling grass between my toes and a blue sky over my head. I can't even imagine not having that opportunity ..."

Bringing his attention back to the matter at hand, Hackett refilled his mug with coffee long since cold. "Apparently the Migrant Fleet is preparing to attempt to retake their homeworld. A full and total military mobilisation."

Shepard felt her fists clench subconsciously as her mind instantly provided the most convenient frame of reference concerning the Quarians – Tali. Dealing with the unfortunate death of her father, and clearing the young woman's name and character before the Migrant Admiralty had given the commander a unique insight into Quarian society. An insight never before glimpsed not simply by a human, but arguably any other race.

That insight revealed a deep and painful split within the Migrant Fleet between those who favoured a peace of sorts with the Geth, and those who favoured war. Irrelevant of the viewpoints it was clear the Quarians as a species had grown tired of their melancholy voyage to nowhere, growing envious of a sky and soil to call their own instead of bulkhead and ship and preferring to have what was lost to them.

Still the Fleet had hardly been united in a desire for war. For such a decision to come to pass a serious change of heart must have occurred.

"Are we confident this intel is up to standard?"

Hackett grimaced. "As confident as I can be considering it's from someone whose responsibility ends the moment the shit hits the fan and someone has to do some actual fighting. The CIA, the SIS, the FSB and the rest of the boys clubs attached to the Federal Security Services are usually good for this stuff … Afterall, they've got to justify themselves somehow, right?"

Shepard pursed her lips, leaning back against the frame of the chair, "Why now? It's been centuries since the were forced out … Do we suspect any outside influence?"

"The Reapers?" He clarified, receiving a nod from the woman opposite. "I suppose it's possible, but I'm inclined to think this is just what it appears to be; a pot that's taken three hundred-plus years to come to the boil. I don't think anyone's really surprised by this …

"Which brings me, finally, to the reason why you're here Shepard. You know as well as I do that humanity's always been proactive in its galactic affairs. Elcor be damned, we're not ones to sit and wait for something to punch us in the face before we go out and do something about it; your first mission against Saren proved as much.

"Fast forward a few years to now and nothing's changed in our attitude. Unfortunately for us, specifically people like you and me who're supposed to keep the peace, we've lost our maverick-card. Before the Battle of the Citadel, as a species we enjoyed the dubious benefit of damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don't. We were free to take action, within reason, any way we saw fit."

The Admiral took a gulp of the stone-cold caffeine. "Now we're on the Council, that's changed. We've got pan-galactic affairs to consider from a position of supposed authority and we can't be unilaterally acting without consensus from the other senior members.

"I definitely don't have to tell you that the Council has zero interest in becoming involved in a Quarian-Geth conflict. They were the ones who kicked the Quarians off the Citadel and considering Council Fleets have spent the last sixteen months hunting Geth warbands, you can guess how they feel about them …

"Humanity has no such prejudice against the Quarians and it's a black-and-white choice as to which one we'd rather have tip the balance of the power against the other."

Shepard frowned, understanding beginning to dawn. "Isn't there hope for a peace? The discovery of the Geth loyal to Saren being distinct from the rest of their people offered a chance at some sort of détente with the Quarians."

"This Legion character," Hackett replied uncertainly. "You might be a big god damn hero Shepard, but tales – even if they're true – of an individual geth revealing the near-destruction of the Citadel at the wings of a vast Geth warfleet, under Sovereign, "wasn't really them" didn't find much accommodation with Alliance top brass. I can't say I blame them … If he was around to at least question, you might get somewhere. I don't think there's a ship in the fleet that'd sign up for a mission to comb the Terminus Systems looking for him though.

"Regardless, as a Council representative, humanity has a vested interest in securing an outcome to this war which best serves the wider Citadel races, as well as the Alliance. Being a Council representative we can't simply send in a fleet or two – we have to be seen to respect the concept of consensus. Alliance assets cannot be freely deployed."

Turning back to the window, the Admiral nodded towards the SR-2. "That's where you come in. There's not a human alive – or dead that we could bring back for that matter – who's had better relations with the Quarians. You carry a hell of a lot of weight with some of their admirals and their wider people. You've proven that you're about as fair and even-handed towards them as anyone in the galaxy could be who doesn't have to wear a bucket over their head full-time--"

"With the greatest of due respect Admiral," Shepard interrupted without waiting for her superior officer to make his next point. "I've led small teams on multiple missions, but I've never taken part in a planetary invasion like the one you seem to be suggesting is going to take place."

"Neither have the Quarians!" Hackett snapped. "If you think you're under-equipped for this, they're not going to last ten minutes. For Christ's sake, Shepard, they don't even have a standing army – just a Marine Corps trained for insertion behind enemy lines and reconnaissance. They need some god-damned experience and you've got more than enough to get the job done. I'm not asking you to win the war single-handedly, although don't get me wrong, that'd be great."

Shepard puffed her cheeks out, conflict waging a war of its own deep within her. On one hand what was proposed took her attention away from the Reapers – away from the larger question of the fate of the Galaxy. Her experience with Legion had further seemed to suggest a monumental misunderstanding of the Geth, a chance that conflict might not be the only useful tool in dealing with them.

Conversely sixteen months of monotony had eaten away at her, threatening to kill a woman who had already faced insurmountable odds twice and died for the cause in-between. The chance to feel her boots scuff rock and soil, to feel the kickback of a rifle in her hand and the adrenalin of battle accelerated her heart within the prison of her chest.

"This wouldn't be an Alliance operation, Shepard," Hackett added without any chance of misunderstanding the statement. "It most certainly won't be a Council-mandated operation. You'll be operating freelance, pretty much as you are now – a Free Captain. A promotion of sorts, if you like."

"You mean a mercenary," Shepard corrected with more distaste than she had intended to show to the Admiral.

Hackett's face was turned away, his expression unreadable. "I mean Free Captain. There's plenty of folk out there with their own ships who don't raid colonies, sell their souls to the highest bidder or take slaves. Sometimes space really is that boring. Maybe not every one of them is flying around in a state-of-the-art warship capable of cutting a Collectors' ship in half, but still …

"I'm still a Spectre ..." The commander pointed out. "What'll be the Council's take on that?"

The Admiral offered a shrug of his shoulders. "When's the last time the Council gave you a mission? Now we're on the Council itself, the Alliance top brass is kept fully informed of Spectre deployments and updates and I happen to know that beyond authorising your expenses, the Council hasn't given you anything to do since they reactivated your status. They've been pretty conspicuous in ignoring what you get up to … There's no reason to think that's about to change.

"Whether you agree with the war or not, it's coming, Shepard. A war that's going to plunge a good chunk of the galaxy into conflict at a critical time where we need to be free to watch for the greater threat. Even if the Reapers have nothing to do with stirring this up, it's of considerable use to them; while we're watching the Geth and the Quarians slug it out over a sun-blasted rock, we're not watching for them."

Crossing his arms over his chest, Hackett gave a pause. "A few prettyboys from the SIS were sent out to the Migrant Fleet this morning to … Make a few suggestions regarding what might be helpful to them. The Quarians should be expecting you in the next little while."

Shepard frowned, folding her own arms to mirror the Admiral. "You were that sure I'd go?"

Stepping towards the pressure door, Hackett's face tightened almost imperceptibly. "You're a soldier, Annika; a soldier who's been stuck without a war to fight for a long time … I might not have died for the cause before, like you, but I damned well know what it feels like to be without the kick of a gun in your hand and the crumple of shells burying themselves in the ground. If the Reapers had shown themselves by now, we wouldn't be having this conversation ..."

He sighed, "But they haven't so we do what we can. Whatever gets you through the day, right?"

Shepard nodded, abandoning her still-full mug to the tabletop and offering the Admiral a final salute. Hackett answered it stiffly, every bit as formally as any cadet graduating from the service academies to Ensign. "Get out there and sort this out, Shepard – this whole sorry nonsense is a distraction from the real threat. Don't get sidetracked."

"One more thing," He added, stepping through the doorway. "I don't doubt your crew will follow you – they followed you back from a near-certain death or a fate worse than it. Just be careful with those two senior operatives; Lawson especially. She wouldn't set foot on an Alliance ship if I could help it ..."

Glancing over his shoulder towards the window, he shrugged. "Your ship isn't Alliance and you're not setting off under my instruction or anyone else with stars on their collar, so who you chose to trust is your business. Just make sure she understands the score."

The creak of poorly-oiled metal sliding across bent grooves followed the Admiral's exit as the door slid shut, leaving Shepard alone with her thoughts and the surface of Franklin drifting into view below. Once home to three thousand colonists, there was nothing save metal, plastic and rubber left to offer an opinion.

If the colony itself had an opinion on the imminence of war, it declined to share it with Shepard.

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**To Be Continued …**


	4. Chapter 4

**WHATEVER SHAPE YOUR BURDENS TAKE ...**

_Pairing : Tali/Lady Shepard_

_Rating : M (Mature)_

_Feedback : FEED ME. _

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_Chapter IV : The Battle Hymn of the Migrant Fleet._

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Considering the nature of the Normandy's upcoming mission, it was nothing less than sensible to guess and hardly surprising to discover that many obstacles and challenges were lying in wait ahead for the ship and its crew. The business of war carried with it the risk of losing everything for absolutely no gain; promising a clean victory only to those who sat on the sidelines, apart from the boots on the ground and the flag officers watching a safe distance away.

If those on the sidelines could somehow see into the SR-2, they might be surprised to learn that an obstacle to their mission had already reared its head scarcely an hour out from Franklin and the clandestine meeting between the Normandy and the majority of the Alliance's Fifth Fleet, under Admiral Steven Hackett.

"This is not a debate!" Shepard barked icily, a palm cutting the air to punctuate her point. Had it not been so totally inappropriate a smile might have crossed her features, born from the deep irony at how the conversation had moved from briefing to argument as surely in real-life as it had played out in Shepard's mind beforehand.

Home to billions of stars with a hundred opinions to each, the Milky Way was not short on sharing its viewpoints on any subject one could possibly pick. There was no end to those who freely shared – or shouted – their feelings and clamoured to be heard. An altogether rarer breed, however, were those with the strength of character and body to back up their opinions; rare individuals with the capability to do more than simply talk.

Miranda Lawson was one such individual. As much a work of science as a work of art and the mere randomness of genetics, she combined a towering intellect, a pale beauty and formidable strength with the unshakable self-belief of a woman who knew precisely how powerful she truly was. Boasting a lengthy litany of accomplishments which included, hardly as a footnote, bringing back a person lost to the living for over two years, the former Cerberus operative was hardly short of practical evidence to support the arrogance and single-mindedness on open display, now.

Folding her arms across her chest,Shepard's eyes passing over the three-dimensional wire rendering of the SR-2, as it hovered above the rail she leaned against. "You've had sixteen months to avoid answering the question but we're of time – you're out of time."

"Is that a threat?" Miranda clipped, eyes narrowing as she leaned over the rail on the opposite side as if deliberately placing the ship, albeit in graphical form, between them and their personal positions. "I hope you'll at least do me the honour of spacing me while I'm awake ..."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "We dropped Samara off on the Citadel barely a week after we destroyed the Collectors Facility. Mordin left for the STG a month later, then Jack for who-knows-where--"

"What's your point, Shepard?" The curvaceous woman interrupted with a frown, brushing a lock of jet-black hair back behind an ear.

Undeterred, the Spectre continued. "Tali went home to the Migrant Fleet almost a year ago, Grunt was back head butting clanmates next and we took Thane back to the Hanar on the burn out from Tankanta.

"They all forged a path, somewhere away from here. Except you."

Miranda crinkled her nose, jaw setting slightly at the thought. Cold eyes fixed themselves on the Normandy's CO but found no flinch to break the contact. "Last I checked, Garrus and Jacob were still on-board."

"Jacob is a career soldier," Shepard retorted. "He spent the last year before you brought me back serving under your command and he's spent the last sixteen months after that serving under mine. I have no doubt that I could offer to take him anywhere in the galaxy and he'd stand down the chance; the Normandy is his home.

"Garrus is a patient … Turian. He's seen plenty of the galaxy and fought most of it while I was sleeping the long sleep. Everyone on-board is here because they want to be, or at least, they know where they want to be and think the Normandy will get them there, eventually. Why are you here?"

"The Reapers," Miranda shrugged simply. "It's the reason this ship even exists and it's the reason you're not still floating through space. I thought we shared that goal."

"We shared the goal but not the methods," Shepard sighed. "I've never been about the games you and the Illusive Man loved to play, Miranda. I knew what the threat was and I tried to deal with it and keep as many people alive as I possibly could. I've scoured the galaxy twice for the best and brightest, and I've tried to hold the line against whatever came to face me. Sometimes it wasn't enough ..."

Shepard swiftly banished thoughts of what it had felt like to die – and remember dying – to the back of her mind, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand. "It was never as simple as stopping the Reapers for you; sometimes it was about human supremacy and galaxy-spanning Machiavellian plots. Always lies and secrets and double-secrets. You took a step away from all of that when you refused to stand in the way of destroying the Collectors' base …

"You've spent your life trying to escape from other people's shadows and their attempts to define you. It started with your father and his "legacy" and it continued with the Illusive Man."

"Don't look at me as if I'm asking you to go outside without a helmet," The Spectre sighed. "Cerberus evaded the Alliance for years, like it had wings on its back. All of a sudden the net is closing in and everywhere it tries to fly, there's a frigate or dreadnought waiting? Your father underestimated you, Miranda, and he paid the price. The Illusive Man underestimated you and now he's paying the price. How long have you been airing Cerberus' dirty laundry?"

Miranda stepped back from the railing, brushing a hand through her hair and puffing out her cheeks as if weighing up the options ahead. "I have to admit, Shepard, I'm a little surprised … I would have thought you'd be pleased."

"I've got no time for Cerberus beyond using them to get closer to the Reapers, and even less time for the Illusive Man and his games," The Spectre admitted. "Maybe I just don't like the thought of you waging some kind of information war with a galaxy-spanning paramilitary group, right under my nose on my ship. All you're doing is repeating this same cycle. You get hurt and you set out to hurt someone else."

"I am not a child, Shepard," The former operative hissed. "I might not embrace Cerberus' ideals in the same way I did before I met you, but don't confuse my opposition to intervening in the Quarians' affairs with ignorance on my part."

Shepard shrugged her shoulders, "So stop feigning ignorance. You know as well as I do that if we're going to have any chance of frustrating the Reapers for a third time, we're going to need unification. We're going to need an alliance; we're going to need some sort of consensus. Stopping Saren, eliminating the Collectors – each step required more resources, more effort. Next time I don't think a single ship, no matter how shiny or powerful or any number of one-man-army-types, no matter how dangerous, will get the job done.

"A conflict between the quarians and the geth has the potential to destabilise half the galaxy. Without our intervention it might drag on for years, even decades. We've spent sixteen months trying to divine some glimpse of the Reapers' intentions and come up with nothing. We don't know what they're going to do or when they're going to do it, so we have to be ready. This war is the perfect ploy, whether deliberate or not, to distract us."

"Don't insult yourself or me by pretending you haven't already considered that," Shepard added. "Ultimately this is not open for debate. This is my ship and I'm taking it to the Migrant Fleet, where I will do whatever I can to bring this conflict to an end as quickly as possible one way, or another. What is open for debate, what hasn't been decided, is the role you'll play.

"You're an invaluable asset and a vital member of my time, Miranda. We've fought with our backs up against each other and the wall, and we've come away stronger for it. Regardless of that, however, I need to be able to trust you as my XO. I need to able to trust you with this ship, whenever I need to. You need to decide just how powerful your desire to dismantle Cerberus, to teach the Illusive Man a lesson, is."

The tension could well have been fashioned into weapons for the two women to fight their frustrations out, such was the weight of it. Miranda's eyes never left Shepard's, though they became unfocused as if her mind considered something other than what she could see. Moments stretched to minutes of silence and though it was awkward, Shepard savoured the rest it afforded her voice.

"If you'll excuse me Shepard," Miranda said finally. "I have to make one last transmission."

The Normandy's CO searched for the hint. "The last one? And then?"

Miranda did not bother to look back, as the pressure door sealing the Comm. Room retracted back into the wall with a whine. " … And then I have the CIC until 0200."

Running a hand across her face as if she could massage the tension away, Shepard slumped against the bulkhead and handed off her slight weight to the ship's superstructure. Always sure of how to replace a heatsink under fire, or perform a combat re-route on a locked door, the Spectre had found herself forced to undergo a crash-course in the subtleties of crew management. While the battlefield she was most experienced with was instantly recognisable, a very different one existed all around.

Consisting of dozens of personalities, composed of nominal allies instead of opponents, it constantly surprised and stretched her capacity to deal. A battlefield unique to the Normandy, constantly threatening to turn the ship's compartments and decks into metaphorical killing zones.

A more conventional battlefield of shells and rifles couldn't come quickly enough.

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Annika's head rested against the pillow underneath for almost an hour before the same, terrible dreams visited her. They were always careful to change the terror they inflicted, so that each time she died under the foot of a Batarian warlord, or was ran through at the end of a Rachni's razor-sharp, chitinous claw, her heart believed it had beaten its last.

She would always jerk upwards to cough violently, gasping for air as if her lungs had believed their thankless task over and declined to draw a new breath. Damp red locks would stick to clammy, pale skin – tickling her cheeks and eyes. As ridiculous as all this was for someone who had survived that which was not survivable for any mortal life, namely death itself, her hands would always shake for a while after she woke.

Chest heaving with exertion, Shepard swung her legs over the edge of the bed and unsteadily climbed to her feet, which felt leaden and heavy. A dull ache radiated up her spine and spread out to annoy the small of her back, prickling tired muscles which longed for more than an hour of tussled, uneasy rest.

Making her weary way to the wash room and snatching a towel from the rack, She dabbed away the worst excess of the dampness from her pale skin, roughly pushing her hair free from her features and back behind the ears. Pulling the straps of her vest back up over the shoulders from where they had dropped, Shepard tugged her duty trousers up over her knees and waist – dropping down to the bed with a sigh afterwards.

While it could hardly provide a distraction for the seven-plus hours to go before she relieved Miranda in the CIC, her desktop terminal beeped furiously for attention. Levering herself up from the mattress, she struck the flat of her palm against the button mounted between the two enormous panes of glass providing a view into the fish tank dominating the wall. Despite being on a ship as advanced as the Normandy, there was no provision for automating the feeding of the fish which swam lazily in their star-crossing, miniature ocean.

Consequently, it required the SR-2's Commanding Officer to personally intervene every few hours.

Stooping over the desk half-a-level above the bed, Shepard opened the terminal inbox and a very short message from the ship's consciousness-of-sorts, EDI; a message without any actual message contained within.

Brow creasing with a frown, she backtracked and tapped her fingertip against the AI's generating plate mounted to the bulkhead. "EDI – what's this about?"

The tone seemed almost irritated, if such emotions could be experienced by something far closer to perfection than mere flesh-and-blood. "Without mainline access to "A" Deck I have no way of reaching you without emergency protocols; this seemed the most efficient method."

"Well obviously it's not an emergency," Shepard dead-panned, leaning her shoulder against the bulkhead. "What's up?"

"Someone is attempting to access sublight communications and transmit data to a nearby buoy without an identification code. They have taken steps to temporarily remove my ability to monitor the system or identify them by other means, however, they are unable to stop me isolating the communications system. I have prevented the transmission."

EDI's wireframe avatar rotated a few degrees. "What are your orders?"

The slightest knowing smile played across her lips, "I think I know who's doing the not-so-covert sending, and what they're trying to send. Let the transmission through but keep an eye out … Or a sensor. If it happens again, let me know. Unauthorised use of communications is a serious issue on a warship … That doesn't qualify under the emergency protocols to override my privacy lock?"

"I did not think it would be necessary to use the protocols," EDI replied matter-of-factly. "I calculated a very high probability that you would be awake. You do not sleep well."

Unable to deny the truth of it, as harsh as it sounded when spoken aloud, the Spectre managed the slightest shrug of her shoulders to no-one in particular. "Goodnight, EDI."

The avatar dissolved into the electronic nothingness from whence it came. "Logging you out, Shepard."

* * *

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For as far as the eye could see, the Migrant Fleet seemed to compete with the stars themselves to fill the great nothingness between worlds; untold shining silver shapes moving silently together. Varying from tremendous metal spheres a hundred times bigger than the Normandy, sporting prows made up of sharp spires clustered together and reaching out from the circular equator, to sleek arrows with tapered bows as if designed to sail a sea between stars.

Countless more ships fell in-between; ponderous and bulky, quick and agile but all fulfilling some vital function for the good of the Migrant Fleet and the survival of the Quarian people on-board. Virtually all were alien in origin; Batarian, Turian, Salarian and a dozen more but some, a rare few in service for many centuries, were indigenous. Commissioned when the Quarians still called a world their home rather than a collection of metal shells, they had been retrofitted, repaired and re-worked over hundreds of years so that they barely resembled a time before the geth.

Still, they endured. Survival was good enough – it _had_ been good enough.

Shepard felt the weight of the helmet in her hands, running a gauntleted finger down the red stripe broken by the reinforced window that allowed for vision when wearing. Folding the compact bench – little more than a ledge – out from the wall and setting herself down, she sucked in a lungful of air. No matter how often she donned the helmet, even in situations where the alternative would be to choke and die, the most ridiculous claustrophobia clawed at the depths of her mind.

She grimaced at the recollections which flashed through her consciousness. The helplessness at being thrown clear of the burning hulk of the SR-1; the frantic panic induced by the hissing of precious air being bled to the void; the blind fumbling in a desperate, vain attempt to find the break. The pain in her chest which spread to burn through her veins, as hyperventilating lungs transported carbon dioxide and worked, unwittingly, to poison her.

Shuddering groans and desperate sighs as the last few useful atoms of oxygen were consumed or lost to space. A few terrible moments of spasm brought on by delirium and asphyxiation and finally, blessedly, death.

Between her death and rebirth, Shepard had relied on a suit tank over an atmosphere more than once and yet, frustratingly and relentlessly, those same recollections always preceded the hard seal and the hiss of filtered, conditioned air. As if, somehow, her personality was so totally divided that the scars of her past were borne almost entirely by the subconscious alone.

An autonomic, instinctual under-brain which occasionally broke free of the restraints of sentience, offering terrifying reminders and horrific memories whenever faced with something it had no control over.

The decking shook beneath the Spectre's feet, a muffled series of thuds resounding throughout the cramped airlock. "We have achieved hard seal," EDI announced via the intercom. "Equalising pressure and temperature – Standby Shepard."

Drawing on duty to banish uncertainty for another time, she slipped the helmet over her head and brought it down offset against the front of the collar plate, twisting it back level with her face to form a seal. A green light illuminated somewhere in Shepard's field of vision, confirming pressurisation alongside the hiss and tickle of cool air blowing past her features.

Precious few humans could ever lay claim to stepping aboard the Migrant Fleet and certainly none could claim to have done so twice. With that small and fairly meaningless record assured, Shepard stepped through the retreating outer pressure door of the Normandy and into another world. Given the uniqueness of the Quarians as a matter of course, she found it impossible to identify any of the three standing opposite to meet her.

None of the three wore purple or blue, or a shawl, and indeed none seemed even female. A pang of disappointment poked at her gut – if only for the sake of familiarity, to say nothing of the bond of friendship, Shepard had hoped Tali would be amongst the first to greet her. Maybe later.

"Captain Shepard of the Normandy," One of the three quarians ventured, dipping his head in greeting. Although it took a moment to place the voice – recognition entirely without a face to help – Shepard recalled a name to put to the faceplate.

A small smile graced her lips, unseen through the helmet she wore. "Kal'Reegar? It's good to know you haven't gotten yourself killed yet."

The Quarian chuckled, shrugging his shoulders slightly as he stepped forward to meet Shepard's outstretched hand. "Captain at last?" He asked, shaking said hand with a firm grasp. "If saving the galaxy twice is only grounds for promotion to Captain, making Admiral in the Alliance must be a lot harder than just being comfortable sitting behind a desk all day."

"Free-Captain," Shepard corrected with a shake of her head. "I'm out here on my own, now – still just a plain-old Lieutenant Commander back home."

Kal laughed again, shaking his own head as if the lie he had just been told was so obviously a fraud as to be funny. "Whatever you say, Captain – I wonder what's really changed though. You were out here on your own before ..."

"Speaking of Admirals," Shepard offered weakly in an attempt to steer the conversation away from having to tell more half-truths and outright falsehoods. "Am I expected?"

A silence stretched between them, as if the Quarian were weighing up pressing the issue. "Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema is standing by to speak with you," He relented. Stretching a hand towards the airlock exit, he fell in shoulder-to-shoulder with the nominal "free-captain".

Thankful for the temporary silence, Shepard focused on something more important and closer-to-home. "How's Tali?"

"Lieutenant Zorah is continuing to impress," Kal replied almost in a deadpan. His focus remained directly ahead, failing to match Shepard's as her eyes turned to question the Quarian further. Nonchalantly tipping his faceplate around to look towards the human, he shrugged again. "Why so surprised, Captain? She's learned from the very best the galaxy can offer … Becoming a fine combat engineer in the very proudest traditions of the Flotilla."

Shepard nodded, "It sounds like there's an interesting story to be told there ..."

"One or two," Kal agreed, glancing back to exchange looks with the accompanying two quarians which were as impossible to decipher as anything else concerning their faces. "They're the Lieutenant's stories, however. I'll let her tell them."

She nodded hoping the reacting smile, which graced her lips for only a moment before composure clamped down upon it, went unseen. So many of Shepard's team had gone their separate ways so long ago, to so many different parts of the greater galaxy; it would be good to see Tali again, to find some comfort in the sight of a familiar face. A welcome and pleasant pause, before the great unpleasantness of war began in earnest.

* * *

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There was a strong parallel between Admral Steven Hackett, commanding officer Alliance Fifth Fleet, and Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema. Both were time-served in the cauldron of combat across a dozen worlds and frontiers, equally experienced commanding nothing more than the pistol in their hands or commanding dozens of starships and thousands of lives alongside the fate of entire sectors.

There were differences, however. Hackett was a career-officer; choosing to give the useful years of his life to the betterment of Earth and her peoples and colonies. First Contact War aside the role of the Alliance had been mostly proactive rather than reactive, to explore and colonise rather than to simply defend. Flag Officers were more akin to their 18th Century counterparts, sailing bold new routes and marshalling unexplored lands for future exploitation and success.

Gerrel chose to give the useful years of his existence in service simply to ensure there would still be a Migrant Fleet when it came time to stand down, for him to peter out the twilight of his life aboard. To become an Admiral of the Flotilla was not to reach a new level of success but to reach a new level of responsibility. To take into their hands the very lives of an entire race, bound inside their metal hulls and adrift between the stars.

Still the parallels between Shepard's "former" commanding officer and the quarian sitting opposite made it easier to relate, easier to find common ground. She found a greater rapport between herself and Gerrel than would probably be found with any of the other members of the Migrant Fleet Admiralty.

"Captain Shepard of the Normandy," The Admiral greeted with a dip of his faceplate. "Please take a seat – I have been expecting you, although I do not think that will surprise you. I do not think what I have to say will surprise you, either.

"The last time you were here, aside from the unfortunate business of Lieutenant Zorah's trial, our fleet was fractured and divided. There was much dissent on exactly what the course of action for the Flotilla should be, in regard to the geth. I make no pretence or excuse for my position – I favoured reclaiming Rannoch for my people and the children to follow."

The Quarian locked his fingers together, "I was not fully supported in this. Your parting words were harsh on our ears, even inside these suits, but they were correct. The "political bullshit" as you called it, had consumed the Admiralty Board and defined our every action. Some, like that suit-wetter Zaal'Koris, were only interested in talking. We've been "talking" for three hundred years and nothing has changed. When the geth learned to talk independently, our civilisation as we knew it ended. There is not much room for improvement on that front.

"Others like Daro'Xen, would be content to lock themselves in a laboratory and disassemble Geth until she died of old age. Mark my words Captain there is something deeply unsettling in her beliefs. I am a soldier first and foremost and as far as I am concerned, we are still at war with the geth but nonetheless, the object is to defeat the enemy and not indulge in what is tantamount to torture, if they were made of flesh and blood rather than metal.

"What you achieved in eliminating the Collectors threat passed well beyond the Omega-4 Relay, Captain. The aftershock of your victory rolled all the way to the Flotilla and its repercussions are the reason you are here, now."

The Admiral cocked his faceplate to the side, the silhouette of his eyes narrowing. "The revelation of the Collectors origins, where they had come from and now what they had been made to do, betrayed the true scale of the Reapers' threat not just to the Asari, Turians, Salarians or Humans, but the entire galaxy. We could no longer as a people sit on the fence and claim such affairs were the business of the Citadel species – we could not continue to float between worlds aimlessly.

"It became obvious that, eventually, the Migrant Fleet would have to fight. Such a scenario would simply finish the work the geth begun three hundred years ago if it were to happen in the near-future. We cannot go to war against the Reapers with families and children side-by-side with our soldiers. We need a home."

"There is no time to find another," Garrel sighed. "The Reapers will not give us years to carry out exhaustive soil sampling and xenobiological studies. Even if the Ancestors were to bless us with a perfect world to live upon, it would still take decades to effect a colonisation; to be caught around a fledgling home when the Reapers pour into the galaxy from wherever they hide is to seal our doom.

"Only one world will accept us instantly; only one world will welcome us like the long-lost children it had once raised over millions of years. If we are to go to war with you, Captain, and with the other races of the galaxy to protect our great civilisations and achievements, we must have a home to defend. It is impossible for one's home to be a weapon of war if we must then go to fight."

In only a few moments, the truth of the matter had finally been revealed to Shepard. The quarian desire to return to Rannoch, to drive out the geth and retake their home was not one borne solely from historical grudge and ill-feeling, as she had thought before. Instead the Migrant Fleet had come to recognise what the Citadel Council still refused to accept – the Reaper threat would call for a galaxy's resources. It could not be defeated through an ignorance of the truth.

For all other races, war was the continuance of politics by other means. For the quarians, however, it was to risk extinction. To bring the entirety of your civilisation to a fight was to risk the death of your wives, mothers, husbands, children and friends alongside your soldiers trained to fight and if necessary, die.

Deep down Shepard felt some great galactic clock ticking down to a final confrontation. The Reapers were beyond some dark shadow, plotting some terrible notion which for now would go unknown. Eventually however, they would strike decisively – now was not the time for subterfuge and stealth. Saren and Sovereign had attempted such and failed; the Collectors likewise and she suspected whatever it was the Reapers planned it would be without any pretence to secrecy.

There certainly did not seem to be the decades available for the Migrant Fleet to find a new home. Admiral Hackett's reasoning – that a prolonged conflict between the geth and the quarians would pull focus away from the real enemy, even perhaps offering them cover of war by which to strike at a dozen stellar civilisations, was plain to see.

"I understand the reasoning Admiral," She began slowly. "There's the issue of those that don't agree with you."

"Politics, Shepard!" Garrel enthused with a slap of his hand against the tabletop. "You don't always have to convince your opponents of the superiority of your position to win the day. It's enough to buy their silence and shout twice as loudly. Securing Daro's agreement was a matter, however distasteful on my part, of suggesting the scope of technological research that could be found on the battlefield, along with the chance to penetrate the Veil and see exactly what the Geth have been getting up to for the last three hundred years."

The Admiral shifting his weight on the stool, "Zaal'Koris became a lot less vocal in his opposition when the full data regarding your mission against the Collectors became available, and the full threat facing us became obvious. I expected his resolve to harden when he learned of your reprogramming of the "heretic" geth platforms – I assumed he would find this evidence of the possibility of appeasement. Instead Koris seemed to think this detracted from their sentience … The fool cannot even maintain the absurd logic of his own arguments.

"Four votes, two secured and one convinced to abstain. That left only Shala'Raan to convince. Something I utterly failed to do."

Shepard frowned, tilting her head questioningly. "Make no mistake, Captain," Garrel answered with a shake of his faceplate. "Raan is a rock upon which one could build a lighthouse – in twenty years of serving alongside her I have seen Shala make only one spur-of-the-moment decision; synchronising her suit with Tali's mother when she went into labour, unexpectedly early. Always looking for more data, more opinions – I cannot help but come across as an old warhawk spoiling to have my people killed in war when compared to her. I suspect Zaal'Koris comes across as a quarian who relies on his suit to provide a backbone.

"I did not convince Shala to go to war – it was Tali. Furthermore it was Tali who convinced her without speaking a single word in favour. Lieutenant Zorah has changed greatly since she first left the Flotilla on her Pilgrimage; assisting you in putting a stop to Saren and Sovereign, returning to the Fleet to undertake dangerous missions deep into geth territory and then unwaveringly, without hesitation following you through the Omega-4 Relay to put an end to the Collectors. Pledging service to the military and safety of the Fleet she had grown up before my very eyes."

Gerral shrugged, "Apparently she has grown up before Shala's eyes as well. War hardens you, Shepard – I do not need to tell another solider how it tires the soul and makes you long for the days when you did not know duty, honour and service as wrong as that would be. Tali is not as carefree and naïve as she once was all those years ago and while I think she is all the better for it, I suspect in Raan's eyes it is for the worst. She was very close to Tali's mother …

"Tali's mother was quite unlike her father – a dreamer rather than a soldier. She felt strongly for shielding our children from the reality of the hardship of the Migrant Fleet, even if it impacted negatively on the efficient running of the Flotilla. I recall Rael'Zorah had many arguments with here over it ..."

"I think seeing Tali growing up so quickly hurt Shala," The Admiral mused, shaking his faceplate as if to try and stay on topic. "She finds it difficult to accept that the future of the Flotilla's children might now be to face the harsh reality of the galaxy as soon as they can stand. If the Reapers appear before we were able to find a new home, those children would be taken to war to die.

"A combination of Tali's return to us after your victory and the nature of the Collectors, alongside what that meant for the future of the galaxy, was enough to persuade her that war in the here and now would put us in good stead for war later."

"Now you are up to date with our political bullshit," The Admiral summarised. "The Admiralty Board has voted to reclaim Rannoch; three votes for, with one abstaining. The Migrant Fleet is going to war."

Gerral leaned forwards, tapping a finger against the desktop. "All that remains then is where you will fit into this. It can hardly have escaped your notice that the Migrant Fleet does not conduct battles for orbital superiority and carry out planetary invasions regularly; our military is a strictly rapid-reaction force designed for deployment behind enemy lines, reconnaissance and limited open warfare. We have a lot to learn before we push through the Veil and into geth space …

"Despite our shortcomings in these areas, I am assured our marines are hard-at-work devising new tactics and methods to make our forthcoming mission a success. For now, Captain, I would like you see just how useful these new tactics are. A single squad has completed this "field training" which if proven up to task, will be rolled out across all regiments immediately subject to my approval."

The Admiral climbed to his feet, "My approval will be conditional on your approval. Work with my Chief of Staff and conduct an exercise to put this new training through its paces. The Reapers might have forced our hand in retaking Rannoch sooner rather than later, or never at all, but I will not put my people at risk without confidence in their preparation being the best I can give them."

"Make them work hard," Gerral pressed. "They may be doing it for real soon enough. I will have my Chief of Staff contact you shortly."

Although her face was as impassive as any officer as experienced as she, Shepard could already feel the adrenaline stored deep inside releasing to burn through her veins. Even if the impacts were no more dangerous than blank rounds and injury came through accident rather than enemy fire, an exercise was given all the weight of a real battle when backed-up with the spectre of war. To be free of the monotony of paperwork and starship command, even if only for a while, appealed to martial instincts undimmed since the days of Officer Cadet Annika Shepard.

There was something altogether simpler, almost purer about fighting with soil crunching underneath your boots and a real, rocky ground to run over – even if she was a woman more at home when the stars were all around her, rather than simply above her head.

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The business of war began well before the first broadsides were fired across the stars, or the first dropships screamed through the atmosphere to disgorge their troops. The business of invasion began with far more mundane means – namely logistics, ranging from how one might reach the war to how one intended to feed and clothe those that would fight and die in it.

The Commanding Officer of the Normandy was consequently not the only one with something to offer in the planning and execution of war. In the ship's armoury under the intrigued eyes of a number of quarians, Jacob ran through drills developed by the Alliance and Cerberus to expedite weapon reloading and cleaning under battlefield conditions. Elsewhere several visitors were tutored in the mathematical, time-consuming art of weapon calibrations by a dutiful Turian named Garrus Verkhaven.

The SR-2's Executive Officer, Miranda Lawson, even indulged a quarian Captain in his numerous rapid-fire questions regarding compensating for spacial drift inherent to all interstellar coordinates reached via Mass Effect Relays. Perhaps less out of an altruistic need to help and more out of a need to demonstrate her superiority but helpful, nonetheless.

Engineer Donnelly was only too pleased to listen to the never-ending stream of compliments directed at the Tantalus-class Element Zero Core, taking credit wherever possible with a smile or a wink or a dubious anecdote regarding personally defeating a Collector in hand-to-hand combat.

In fact the only member of the Normandy not actively assisting in some way _was_ the ship's Commanding Officer. Shepard pulled off her boots, dropping them to the deck of her cabin with a thud of rubber-against-metal. Falling back against the bed, she puffed her cheeks outwards and stared up at the ceiling bulkhead, not bothering to resist the yawn which spread her lips widely.

A two-tone bleep from the door intercom interrupted the rare silence. "Come in," Shepard called out, sitting up and brushing her hair back behind her ears. The cabin doors parted, trading utilitarian gun-metal grey for a familiar shawl with spirals of purple and pink. Shepard pushed herself up to standing as a faceplate-from-the-past stepped through the hatchway.

The Spectre closed the distance quickly, a smile spreading across her lips. "Lieutenant Tali'Zorah!" She began, getting no further before the quarian stepped forward and in one fluid movement, spread her arms and embraced the free-captain. Laying her own hands gently on the small of the other woman's back, Shepard enjoyed the warmth of the moment for what it was.

"Just Tali, Shepard," The quarian replied softly, becoming conscious of the fact she still held the woman opposite in her arms. Finally withdrawing and taking a step back, she tipped her faceplate upwards. "It is good to be home again. I am glad it is you the Alliance sent to help us."

"I haven't been with the Alliance for a long time," Shepard offered weakly, voice devoid of assuredness in the face of the half-truth. She gestured to the surrounding bulkheads with a single hand. "Free-Captain and all."

With great difficulty, she thought she caught sight of a knowing smile spreading across lips made hazy by the obfuscating faceplate. "Of course," Tali accepted with a dip of her head. "It doesn't matter why you're here – only that you're here."

Crossing her arms across her chest in what was fast becoming a standard response, Shepard cocked her head to the side, "You're the Admiral's Chief of Staff," She guessed. "I didn't make Lieutenant until I was a good few years older than you are … How long before I'm taking orders from you?"

"I don't have my own ship, yet," Tali teased, shrugging her shoulders. "I'll be Tali'Zorah vas Normandy for some time to come. I've been away too long, Shepard – it seems so much bigger than I remember."

"We had a few more voices back then to fill the silence," Shepard nodded wistfully, pursing her lips slightly. "But you're right; you've been away far too long. Would you like a tour of the SR-2, Lieutenant?"

Tali placed a single hand against her hip, faceplate cocked to the side as if trying to work out if the Captain was being serious. "I've probably seen more of this ship than you have, Shepard."

Pulling her boots up around the ankles and making short work of lacing them tightly, the CO offered the quarian a small smile. "Then you can take me on a tour of the ship – _my_ ship."

"On the bounce, Lieutenant Tali'Zorah!" Shepard ordered with mock-seriousness. It was good to see a friendly faceplate again.

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**To Be Continued …**


End file.
